Despite what some women might say about how a man would endure through childbirth, it is not something that the male body has evolved to cope with, and so leads to the age old question: who has the higher pain threshold, man or woman? After monitoring around 10,200 male and female patients after surgery - both major, like heart surgery, or minor, such as biopsies - over the course of four years, a prelimina ...

Back in 2011, a new planet was discovered about 560 light years away. More information has now been unveiled about this planet that has led scientists to create a new class just for this planet - and any in the future that might fall into this category. There is already a term that astronomers use for planets that have a higher mass than that of Earth, up to about 10 Earth masses (ten times the mass of Eart ...

There are a few theories as to how the Americas came to be populated, the favourite of which leans towards the idea that the first Americans and modern Native Americans share common ancestry. The reason this is only a theory is because although the genetics of modern Native Americans would appear to link them to this story, their facial features are different to those of the oldest skeletons from the region ...

A species of snake that has managed to elude, well, everyone for almost 80 years has been rediscovered in Mexico, according to the Smithsonian Institute in Washington DC in the US, the findings of which have been published in the journal PLOS ONE. The nocturnal Clarión Nightsnake was first discovered in 1936 by William Beebe, an expert on natural history, on Clarión Island, a Mexican island in the Pacific. ...

After 12 years of research in the forests of southern India, scientists have confirmed the existence of 14 new species of amphibian, known as “dancing frogs”, and have published the findings in the Ceylon Journal of Science. The dancers are the male frogs, which partake in unusual breeding behaviour, called ‘foot flagging’. Not unlike a ballet arabesque, foot flagging consists of the frog stretching and ext ...

Scientists from Germany have independently confirmed the 2010 research from a US and Russian team who claimed to have discovered a new element - the elusive Element 117 - moving it a step closer to being recognised on the periodic table. The team from the GSI Helmholtz Centre for Heavy Ion Research, which is an accelerator laboratory in Darmstadt, say that they themselves have also been able to create and o ...

Many of us would have learned something about the Black Death at school, being that it was one of the most devastating wipe-outs to hit Europe, resulting in the deaths of between 30 and 50% of the population in the mid-1300s. Although the whole range of symptoms is not exactly known because accounts at the time vary so widely, one thing that is consistent is the appearance of buboes, which were swellings fi ...

In the neverending search for planetary bodies capable of at least once supporting life in our solar system, NASA scientists have suggested that not only one, but two of Jupiter’s moons may fall into that category. In a study published  the journal Planetary and Space Science, both Europa and Ganymede - the largest moon in our solar system at 3,275 miles/5,270km wide - might have liquid water oceans that co ...

An experimental treatment from the University of Pittsburgh in the US and published in the journal Science Translational Medicine could provide hope for people who suffer injuries resulting in the loss of muscle. The study was a small one - five men, of whom two had obtained their injuries from explosions in war, two in skiing accidents, and one through exercise. All of the patients were missing 58 to 90% o ...

Although testing cosmetics and other products on animals is illegal in the UK, as is the selling or importing of products with animal-tested ingredients within the EU, there are still some countries in the world where it is the norm. But that could all now come to an end! Scientists have managed to grow human skin in a lab. Now some of you may be thinking, “they’ve already managed to do that!”. But when ski ...